Many embodiments of a personal cart allowing to carry around one or a plurality of passengers are known although their forms vary according to the application and the needs of the user.
For example, such personal carts are well known in the leisure industry, and more specifically in the golf industry where they are used to carry players and their equipment around a golf course. As it is well known, the general configuration of a typical golf cart is similar to the configuration of most four wheels road vehicles. It includes a bulky frame mounted on four wheels, seats mounted to the frame to support one or more passengers, and conventional propulsion, transmission, steering and brake means. A conventional golf cart is either energize by a combustion or an electrical engine.
A first major drawback of conventional golf carts is their relatively important weight, which is of course somehow detrimental to the golf course surface since they cause compaction of the golf surface, but more importantly that limits their autonomy. A typical golf cart weighs near 1000 lbs. With the additional weight of two peoples with their golf bag, the total weight can reach nearly 1500 lbs. Therefore, such golf cart equipped with an electrical engine has an autonomy allowing to play about 36 holes of an average size golf course, depending on the golf course geometry, the weight of the actual vehicle, the passengers and their equipment, while a typical golf cart equipped with a combustion engine has a slightly greater autonomy than an electric cart. In addition, golf carts equipped with a combustion engine have the drawback of causing direct pollution, which is less and less well perceived.
Another drawback of conventional golf carts is that they are most often bulky, taking an excessive amount of place when parked at the end of the day, especially considering the fleet required to accommodate the large amount of simultaneous players in an important golf site.
A fourth drawback of conventional golf carts is that their design yields numerous mechanical components, which increases the probability of mechanical failure, in addition to call for frequent periodic mechanical inspections.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,390,216, issued on May 21, 2002, and entitled “Motorized Cart” Sueshige et al. propose a foldable three-wheel one-passenger motorized cart having a tubular frame, at least one driving motor housed in one of the wheel, and a battery housed in another wheel. The general configuration of the vehicle is that of a conventional tricycle, having a front steering wheel operated by and turning in unison with a two-hand handle bar.
A first drawback of Sueshige's vehicle is that it is relatively long, rendering it difficult to steer, especially considering that the steering is achieved by manually turning the two-hand handle bar.
Also, the fact that the steering and the braking are mechanical renders the cart more bound to breakage thus ideally requiring frequent periodic mechanical inspections.
Sueshige solves the storage space problem by making the cart foldable. However, by doing this, he creates the further problem of requiring additional time to store the cart, while adding moving mechanical pieces with the above-mentioned related drawback. Also Sueshige vehicle lacks suspension means to help smooth the ride of its passenger.
Finally, Sueshige vehicle's three-wheel configuration may lack stability on some terrain, especially during turning.
A golf cart having a minimum of parts, especially moving parts, while remaining both stable and comfortable in most driving situations is thus desirable.
Another known embodiment of compact carts is the well-known wheelchair. As the name suggest, the configuration of a conventional wheelchair is based on a chair, to which wheels are provided. A wheelchair may either be equipped with automatic propulsion means, including an electrical engine energized by a battery, or with oversize back wheel that can be reached by the user for causing their rotation.
A first drawback of conventional wheelchairs is that they are most often too heavy. This can be seen as a drawback, since, the weight of the chair has a direct impact on either the ease of the user to manually rotate the wheel, or, as with golf cart, on the autonomy of an electrically powered model.
Finally, a new type of personal vehicle as seen the light recently that has a configuration aiming at addressing the autonomy and size problems of the above described personal carts. An example of this new type of vehicle is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,091 issued to Kamen et al. on Oct. 26, 1999, and entitled “Transportation Vehicles And Methods”.
Although Kamen vehicles' autonomy is increased compared to typical golf cart or wheelchair, it is limited to a single passenger, standing, and without luggage. Hence, its use is limited to only a handful of applications, and is not suitable, for example, as a wheelchair or as a golf cart.